A Tennessee man's desire to make his wedding proposal "unique" led him to a truly down-to-earth idea.

Clifton Smith, 25, of Clarksville, Tenn., used bed sheets to spell out "Will You Marry Me?" in 15-foot-tall letters he strategically placed together in a field on his girlfriend's family farm.

"I had just talked to my parents a few months ago and thought of some really outlandish ideas," Smith told GoodMorningAmerica.com. "And one of them was to see something in a plane. I originally thought about getting paint or something, but I wanted it to be more unique.

"So I thought about the idea to use thrift store bed sheets," he said. "I went around and collected 42 sheets and cut those into uniformed strips and built the letters from there, using staples and wood to piece them together."

Smith's girlfriend, Rachel Weakley, 25, had no idea what was in store for her when he asked her to join him for a casual plane ride overlooking some land as part of his "gradu

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ate work." The pilot, a family friend, was totally on board to help with the proposal.

"I told her a story that it had to do with some of my graduate work," Smith said. "My roommate and I were supposed to go up, and he conveniently backed out a couple days before so she could go up. I told her we could fly over the farm before getting to the school stuff.

"She was really excited because we were getting close and she could see her neighbor's houses, and then we get right over her parent's house and she could see what it said."

Even Weakley's father was in on the plan, as he strategically cut an acre-sized heart shape into the field for the letters to be placed.

"He actually had the idea to cut the heart into the field," Smith said. "He's an engineer, so he used surveying equipment they have and we plotted the points and he used an aerial photo to draw it out and cut the heart into the field."

Once Weakley noticed Smith was actually popping the question, she immediately turned to him and started crying.

"Once we saw the big heart in the field and the letters I turned around and looked at him and he had the box out and I said, 'Yes,' and started crying," Weakley said. "It was just awesome. It was unbelievable."

The happy couple credits Smith's aunt for their relationship.

"We actually were on the same baseball team when we were about 8 or 9 years old," Smith said. "We didn't really have connections after that, but the reason we started dating is because my aunt goes to church with her family and she thought we'd be really good together."